A clearer view: the upgraded Te Waharoa Ararau

An upgraded online tool for the Māori medium sector helps teachers see where a student’s learning is going well, and where extra attention is needed.

Te Waharoa Ararau collects and reports on information about student achievement, and it was upgraded in July this year.

Designed to be used in conjunction with Ngā Whanaketanga Rumaki Māori and therefore Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, the tool is specific to Te Reo Matatini and Pāngarau.

How does it work?

Te Waharoa Ararau uses information entered by teachers to generate easy to follow reports about student achievement. The tool also helps teachers to see patterns in achievement and trends over time.

Every year, teachers collect a range of information about a student’s learning up to a certain point in time. They then use this information to make an ‘overall teacher judgement’ (OTJ) about that student’s progress and achievement.

Te Waharoa Ararau collates and reports OTJs in one place, so that teachers and kura can build a picture of how student achievement is progressing in relation to Te Reo Matatini and Pāngarau.

The system can generate reports at an individual, group or school wide level, as well as show progress over a period of time. It can group by gender, special circumstances, year and or whanaketanga level.

Student achievement in Pāngarau can be further broken down from three main strands into the seven substrands (te tau, te hanga, te ine, etc) to show depth and coverage across the learning area. Te Reo Matatini can also be broken down into kōrero, pānui and tuhituhi.

Student details, teachers, classes and school groups are sourced automatically from your student management system (eTap, Musac, etc) and therefore, any changes are updated in Te Waharoa Ararau.

Linking to extra support

Laura Hawksworth is tumuaki at Tōku Māpihi Maurea Kura Kaupapa Māori in Hamilton, where the new Te Waharoa Ararau is being used every day.

“I was using the old system and then when the upgraded version came out we got on board with that straight away - I’ve found it pretty straightforward to use,” she says.

Laura believes a major strength of Te Waharoa Ararau is its ability to show patterns in student achievement over time.

“I’ve found it helpful when reporting trends in student achievement to the board, and my staff find it helpful to look at data right across the school."

“We’re able to clearly see the areas that are our strengths, and those that are priorities for further development - right down to being able to identify individual students who we want to set up clearer learning targets for,” she says.

“It’s been really helpful in identifying those students who are struggling and those who are excelling."

“It’s easy I think to focus primarily on those who are at manawa taki and manawa ora, but it’s also important to see those who are manawa toa - and to be able to extend them.”

In addition to being used in classroom programme planning, Laura says the information is also being linked to additional support within the kura, such as a kaiawhina who provide extra literacy and numeracy support.

“With the new version, we’ve brought all the teachers on board, and they can all participate and enter their data. They’re using it at the moment to write reports,” she says.

Reporting to whānau is also made simpler.

“We’ve found it really useful to share information with parents, because it allows whānau to see where their children are - you can print out individual children’s progress reports."

“It’s also useful when talking about goal setting with students and whānau. It’s possible that we could include the data in student portfolios and show the progress over the years - like those old Plunket books.”

Laura says there are a number of teacher and kura resources also available as part of the new tool, and these have been helpful in PLD sessions held at Tōku Māpihi Maurea Kura Kaupapa Māori.

Two components

Te Waharoa Ararau has two components.

Te Waharoa Ararau ā-Kura was created to allow kura to collate and report student achievement data for their own reporting purposes.

Te Waharoa Ararau ā-Motu was the mandated report template. This data is used to inform the following year’s Charter targets and Analysis of Variance. Kura used this to submit their aggregated data to the Ministry by 1 March each year.

The new version of Te Waharoa Ararau combines both components, making it easier for kura to meet their legislative reporting requirements.

How to get started and where to go

To use the new version, kura need to register for an Electronic Provisioning Application account, to then create a new Education Sector Logon.

For help on managing Education Sector Logons, you can work through a quick interactive guide(external link) that will take you through the process step by step.

The data entered into Te Waharoa Ararau can only be accessed by kura and those they give access to. The Ministry of Education cannot access any data.

Find Te Waharoa Ararau online on the Te Waharoa Ararau website(external link)